Remembering Vermont: Snow, Silence, and Trains

The first thing I remember about living in Essex Junction is the sound of trains cutting through the cold. The Amtrak station was just down the street, and its whistle carried across the snow like a reminder that the world was still moving, even when everything around me seemed frozen in place. Once, I parked my car near the station before taking a short trip to New York. When I returned, I thought the car had been towed. Only after scanning the lot did I catch a glimpse of its golden beige roof peeking out from a mound of snow. It hadn’t been stolen—it had been swallowed. That was Vermont in winter: the ordinary transformed into something elemental, a landscape that buried and revealed in equal measure.

Snow was not just weather; it was a presence. Half the year it seemed to cover everything, demanding layers of longjohns, jeans, and coats for even the simplest errand. In Florida, leaving a water bottle in the car meant returning to lukewarm plastic. In Vermont, it meant returning to a block of ice. The snow slowed life down, but it also sharpened it. Every step outside was deliberate, every breath visible. It was a rhythm I didn’t appreciate until I left.

Across the street from my apartment stretched a field that seemed perpetually unused. I imagined football games, dogs running free, or even a pickup fútbol match, but I never saw anyone there. Its emptiness was striking, almost stubborn. At first I thought it was boring, but over time I grew to love its silence. Walking along the path beside it, I often thought of Robert Frost. The field felt like the kind of place where he might have paused, pen in hand, to notice the way snow settles on branches or how silence itself can be a kind of company. That field taught me that boredom can be beautiful, that stillness can be its own kind of richness.

I lived in Burlington, Colchester, Winooski, and Essex Junction between 2009 and 2011, while my wife was in college. Those towns were small enough to feel intimate but large enough to carry the hum of movement. Burlington had its cafés and Church Street, where holiday lights strung overhead made the cold feel festive. I remember walking there in December, hearing that I had just missed Luis Guzmán. I looked around, half hoping to see him. We were both Nuyoricans in Vermont, and I admired his work. The idea that he had walked the same street made me feel less alone, as if the place had room for both of us.

I often thought of myself as an outsider, the only Nuyorican I knew in town. At one point I realized I was the only minority at my job, though others had been there before me. What struck me was that I hadn’t noticed until later. I felt welcomed, not singled out. Vermont had a way of softening difference. Perhaps it was because so many people there were outsiders themselves—students from the University of Vermont, transplants from other states, people reinventing themselves in a quieter place. In that way, Vermont was less about belonging to a category and more about belonging to the rhythm of the place: the snow, the trains, the silence.

The beer was good, the people friendly, and the pace forgiving. Vermont seemed like a place where you could start over, where reinvention wasn’t dramatic but natural. It wasn’t about chasing ambition or spectacle. It was about returning to fundamentals: love thy neighbor, share a drink, shovel your driveway, welcome the stranger. Kids rode sleighs, friends gathered without pretense, and competition was measured in kindness rather than status. In a world increasingly distracted by phones and screens, Vermont felt like a reminder of what community could be when stripped to its essentials.

I returned in 2019, years after moving away, and found it quiet as always. That quietness is what I miss most when I’m away. It’s easy to romanticize silence when you live in a noisy place, but in Vermont silence wasn’t emptiness—it was presence. It was the sound of snow falling, the whistle of a train, the crunch of boots on ice. It was the absence of rush, the refusal of spectacle. It was a kind of honesty.

Of course, Vermont has changed since 2011. I imagine more people have moved there, drawn by its reputation for progressive politics and its association with figures like Bernie Sanders. Climate change has reshaped winters and summers, and tourism continues to grow. But the essence of Vermont—the snow, the neighborliness, the quiet—remains. That essence is what I carry with me, what I return to in memory when life elsewhere feels too loud.

Writing about Vermont now, I realize that what I miss is not just the place but the way it made me feel. I miss the boredom of the empty field, the ritual of layering clothes, the surprise of finding my car buried in snow. I miss the way Church Street glowed in winter, the way trains reminded me of movement beyond the frozen landscape. I miss being an outsider who never felt excluded, a stranger who was welcomed without question.

Snow is the thread that ties these memories together. It was the obstacle that buried my car, the silence that filled the field, the ritual that shaped daily life. It was the frozen water bottle in the car, the longjohns for taking out the trash, the crunch beneath my boots. Snow was both burden and gift, both challenge and companion. It slowed me down, but it also gave me space to notice. In that way, Vermont taught me something I didn’t know I needed: that silence and welcome can coexist, that boredom can be beautiful, that reinvention can be quiet.

When I think of Vermont now, I don’t think of ski resorts or artisanal shops. I think of snow and trains, of fields and silence, of neighbors who welcomed me without question. I think of a place that buried and revealed, that slowed and sharpened, that reminded me of fundamentals. Vermont was not spectacular, but it was honest. And in its honesty, it became unforgettable.